Start Press: A Whore No More
You’ve gotta give Microsoft credit. Their invention of the Xbox Live system of achievement points and gamerscore was a stroke of mega genius. It lifted a playbook page from the videogame medium itself—the compulsive quest for nudging high scores ever higher—and applied it to the larger experience of gaming. How do you boost your gamerscore? Simple: play more games (or, put a different way, buy more games). But not just any games—only Xbox 360 games will do the trick. Also, for gamers who have both an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3 in their living room, which console do you... read more
Mass Effect 2 Review (Xbox 360)
Developer: BioWare Publisher: Electronic Arts Platforms: Xbox 360, PC Interstellar role-playing shooter weaves an epic sci-fi yarn The first Mass Effect suffered from an identity problem. It couldn’t decide if it was a role-playing game or a third-person shooter. Even worse, the box-art and promotional materials made you think some generic buzz-cut space marine was the main character. Everyone knows Commander Shepard is a tough-but-compassionate bottle redhead with a weakness for space liquor and alien women. She’s also a beautiful lady.... read more
Start Press: Slamming Games For Being Derivative is Like So Totally Derivative
I just finished reading Gus Mastrapa’s latest review over at Wired’s Game|Life blog, which gleefully eviscerates Visceral Games' Dante’s Inferno for being derivative of Sony’s hack-and-slash masterpiece God of War. With the wordplay equivalent of a Danielson crane kick, Mastrapa points out that Inferno “commits the sin of game theft.” The project “never floats a single original idea.” It “worships at the altar of God of War.” It “clings with near-religious adherence to its sacred text...The Book of Jaffe” (David Jaffe, of course, being God of War’s lead designer). I'm not simply being glib when I tell you the phrase... read more
Catching Up With... Dante's Inferno Concept Artist Wayne Barlowe
Wayne Barlowe gets paid to make your eyes pop out of your skull. The wildly talented science fiction and fantasy artist/author designed the creatures for James Cameron's Avatar. He's done concept art for a number of other Hollywood blockbusters, including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hellboy and most recently Peter Jackson's two-part, big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit. But even though he's done reams of work for the film industry, it was his vivid reimagining of Dante Alighieri's Inferno—the appropriately titled Barlowe's Inferno—that made him the perfect candidate to work on Visceral Games' new hack-and-slash action title, which also... read more
Army of Two: The 40th Day Review (Xbox 360)
Developer: EA Montreal Publisher: Electronic Arts Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 It takes two to make a thing go right Videogames, much like French kissing, ping pong or tandem bicycles, are usually best enjoyed with a friend. Fortunately that’s pretty much the entire premise behind Army of Two: The 40th Day, a game whose single-player campaign is moderately entertaining, but earns bullet-riddled props as a cooperative multiplayer experience.... read more
Start Press: The World Unchanging
Some days I feel like, if my apartment was burning to the ground and I could only rescue one material possession, I’d go straight for my USB-fitted retro NES gamepad. I love the simplicity of its modest, rectangular design. Elderly people wax poetic about the good ole days when life was so much simpler, but everyone knows things were just as thorny and confusing back in the ’40s or ’50s or whenever—teen pregnancy, murder, lawlessness. Nostalgia conveniently edits out the unsavory bits and leaves people with the comfort of that perfect, glimmering delusion. The NES controller, however, hides no such... read more
Start Press: Farewell Crispy Gamer
In November of 2008 I wrote a listicle for this website called Top 5 Videogame Websites For The Thinking Gamer. As the title suggests, I turned the spotlight on a handful of my favorite gaming websites—some popular, some a bit more obscure—that engage the mind and don’t merely apply shock paddles to the frontal lobe with bright colors and busy page design. The website I placed in the #1 spot was a promising upstart called Crispy Gamer.... read more
Osmos (PC)
Developer/Publisher Hemisphere Games Platform: PC The motes on the screen go ’round and ’round If you’ve ever played Spore (Will Wright’s playful, ambitious sim blending elements of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design), you might remember the first stage, in which you control a tiny single-celled organism. As you whip your little flagella to swim around a prehistoric tidepool, your job is to gobble up any creatures that have the ill fortune of being smaller than yourself. As you manage to eat and grow larger, so does the menu. Now Hemisphere has built an entire casual game around this simple... read more
Dark Void Review (Xbox 360)
Developer: Airtight Games Publisher: Capcom Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 Capcom’s sci-fi take on The Rocketeer loses altitude fast Dark Void has all the trappings of an absolute mega-blockbuster title. The game’s storyline piles on intrigue, following cargo pilot William Gray, whose plane crashes in the Bermuda Triangle. From there he crosses into a parallel universe called the Void, which you’d swear was the mystical Paradise Falls from Pixar’s Up, save for the malevolent robotic cult stirring up mischief. Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary wrote the game’s phenomenal score, and one of the videogame industry’s most talented voiceover actors, Nolan... read more
Start Press: All Hail The Minibosses
It’s not very often you’re at a sweaty, late-night rock show and hear the following seven words spill out of the PA: “This last song is called ‘Castlevania 2.’” At least you can imagine you were by listening to the Minibosses’ explosive Live at the Middle East album, recorded in 2004 at a Cambridge, Massachussetts nightclub. As the name of Konami’s 1988 whip-cracking classic leaves guitarist Aaron Burke’s lips, the crowd loses its Nintendo-loving mind, erupting in shrieks of euphoria. A few drum clicks later, the band descends into a savage heavy-metal opus full of blistering doubled guitar parts and... read more
Vampire Weekend Track Pack Available for Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero
Love that new Vampire Weekend album? Of course you do. Well, good news! Now there’s a chance for you to rock out in a whole new way. Two tunes from recently released Contra (“Cousins” and “Holiday”) plus a third from 2008’s Vampire Weekend (“The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance”) are now available as a three-song combo for both Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero.... read more
Trine Review (PC, Playstation 3)
Developer: Frozenbyte Publisher: Southpeak Interactive Platform: PC, Playstation 3 Beautiful but frustrating A depressing trend in sci-fi and fantasy video games is developers’ over-reliance on grim, brown-and-grey visuals to present a world in decay. Sometimes it seems as though art directors’ reference points began with Alien and end with Aliens. So whenever a game like Trine—downloadable for Windows and the Playstation Network—embraces a vibrant color palette and an appreciation for the wondrous as well as the grotesque, you have to take notice. Trine’s high-fantasy milieu is drawn with rich colors and fantastical backdrops: Deep green vegetation grows upon purple rocks,... read more
Bayonetta Review (Xbox 360)
Developer: Platinum Games Publisher: Sega Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3These boots are made for clockin' It's one thing to go over the top, it's quite another to go so far over the top that you start going back down the other side. But the third-person action game Bayonetta doesn't just go that far, it keeps on going until it swings back around and goes over the top a second time. It really is just that ridiculous. That gloriously, unrepentantly ridiculous.... read more
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (Nintendo DS)
Developer: Level-5 Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS A second helping of brain-buffing puzzles This sequel to Professor Layton and the Curious Village is, on its surface, a tale of mystery. And, like many great mysteries, it opens on a train and revolves around death, deception and deduction. But the whodunit element—along with the charming Triplets of Belleville animation style—is really just window dressing for the meat of the game: More than 150 brain teasers that will push to the limit your capabilities for logic, spatial reasoning and reading comprehension. (Hint: If a puzzle seems to require a lot of math,... read more
When Will Nintendo Deliver the New Zelda Wii Game?
Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the company’s launch title in the series for their Wii console, pleased gamers with a compelling story and excellent design and graphics, earning it myriad positive ratings in online player reviews. But that was 2006. Zelda fans are getting antsy, despite December’s release of the well-received Spirit Tracks title for DS. The gaming community is abuzz with the question: “When will we see the new Zelda title for Wii?”... read more
Start Press: Please Stop Talking
There are plenty of talented voice actors working in the videogame industry today. Nolan North is pretty great. You may know him from his performances as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, Miles Desmond in Assassin’s Creed II and witty, relatively nondescript dude-bros from a myriad of other titles. If North isn’t voicing the male lead in the game you’re currently playing, there’s a damn good chance he’s bringing to life “Marine Comrade #3,” whom you’ve never once thanked for laying down suppressive fire while you crouch in cover, frantically reloading your assault rifle.... read more
Blonde Redhead Composing Score to Dungeons & Dragons Documentary
The only sound in the dungeon's inky-black depths is the steady rustle of your chainmail armor... read more
Catching Up With... Dark Void's Senior Producer Morgan Gray
Morgan Gray is no stranger to the videogame industry. He began his career testing for LucasArts, then moved to Totally Games as a designer on the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter series, as well as Star Trek: Bridge Commander, and later as a Project Coordinator on Secret Weapons over Normandy, again with LucasArts. After joining Crystal Dynamics to work on Project Snowblind, he joined the Tomb Raider Legend team as the producer. Most recently Gray has been working for Capcom, serving as the Senior Producer on Dark Void, a third-person shooter that incorporates the Bermuda Triangle, Nikola Tesla, jetpacks and a... read more
Canabalt (iPhone)
Developer: Adam Atomic Platforms: iPhone, iPod Touch, PC Deceptively simple indie game will leave you breathless If the most primal dilemma human beings face is fight-or-flight, the vast majority of games gun for enjoyment of the former. Understandably so—there’s a strategic, almost tactile intensity to the simulated clash of two opposing forces. Indie platform-action game Canabalt, however, bucks this trend by milking a shocking amount of fun out of a reasonably straightforward flight fantasy. ... read more
Start Press: Smooth Operator
When I was 10 years old, I fantasized about sitting in a cubicle wearing a phone headset and fielding customer-service phone calls all day long. I really did. But not just any old call center. I wanted to be a Game Play Counselor for Nintendo of America. These were real, actual videogame experts that you could call up with your hardest videogame questions. I imagined them reclining in their office chairs accomplishing unthinkable gaming feats—beating Mega Man II without dying once!—between nonchalant sips of foul-tasting coffee.... read more
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